The present invention relates to a thermal printer and, particularly, to a thermal printer which is useful for listing personal computer outputs in which speed-up is requested, and is effective in reducing the running cost by saving the inked ribbon and paper or thermosensitive paper in applications where leaving a record is the sole purpose rather than pursuing a high print quality.
Conventional thermal printers are less capable in the matter of speed than wire dot-matrix printers. For frequent listing operations in personal computer applications, the print speed is a prime requisite to be fulfilled even at the sacrifice of the print quality. Conventional thermal printers are capable of high precision printing, but have difficulty in speeding up the operation. In addition, these printers have a shortcoming of high running cost per print due to the use of the expensive inked ribbon.